


it’s not a goodbye

by lilbirdie



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dolores is real, Human Dolores (Umbrella Academy), cant believe that’s a tag I love it, five loves his wife!!, i don’t know what i’m doing, some fluffy angst sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 03:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20037058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbirdie/pseuds/lilbirdie
Summary: He holds her until he hears the bus approaching, holds her as tightly to his chest as he can. It’s not a goodbye, but he hasn’t been apart from her for any real period of time for as long as he can remember. It’ll be odd, to not have her by his side making snide remarks, even if it’s only for a few days.





	it’s not a goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this on tumblr a while ago, but I want to figure out how this site works so I thought I’d post this here too and see what happens lmao

**_2019, April 1st_**

The rest of the world doesn’t know the apocalypse was just averted, but still, he expects people to be looking up at the sky, wondering where the fire is. He feels jumpy, self-conscious, lightheaded, almost. His life goal has been completed. Everyone is finally safe. He can... he can do whatever he wants now.

They both can.

Dolores stands in front of the bus stop, ticket in her hand, cheeks still a little flushed from the margarita. 

“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Five asks. 

“And tell my parents what?”

“That I’m your friend?”

“They’ve never met you, or heard of you. They’d ask questions.”

He quirks a brow. Lots of people had asked them questions; it had never been a problem. She falters, just a tiny bit, shuffling on her feet.

“I just... I think I need to do this on my own,” she murmurs. She looks at the ground, and then back up at him, eyes darting to the left. “I just... I haven’t seen them since... I need to see them. To say goodbye, at least.”

Five smiles, reaches up to hold her face.

“Hey. I get it,” he says, and she smiles back. She’s not a little girl, not the one they remember. Her old life is exactly that, her old life. What she wants to do with it is up to her, but he’ll be there for her.

He holds her until he hears the bus approaching, holds her as tightly to his chest as he can. It’s not a goodbye, but he hasn’t been apart from her for any real period of time for as long as he can remember. It’ll be odd, to not have her by his side making snide remarks, even if it’s only for a few days.

“You think they’ll... you think they’ll recognise me?” she whispers into his shoulder. 

“Of course they will. You’re their daughter.”

“I’m not. Not anymore.”

The bus pulls up. He kisses her forehead.

“They love you. That’ll be enough.”

He misses her warmth the instant she pulls away.

As she steps onto the bus, she calls, “you know where I live, right?”

“Of course I know where you live,” he says. “What am I, an idiot?”

“Debatable,” she smirks, and the door shuts and the bus drives away, and takes a piece of him with it.

~~

Surrounded by his siblings, surrounded by blue, by flashing, by yelling, he screws his eyes shut and forces every ounce of his power out of him, every ounce of strength. Finally when he feels the familiar dip in his stomach as he begins to fall through space and time, he opens his eyes and watches the fire consume the world, just for a second. 

Watches it consume Dolores. 

(He remembers, just for a second, to back when they were both truly children, both alone together in the wasteland that was once the world. They were hiding from the night, from the cold, bundled under every single scrap of material they could find, and still his teeth chattered.

“I’m scared of the dark,” she’d admitted. 

“Why? That’s stupid.”

“You’re stupid,” and she’d kicked at him. “I don’t know, I just... don’t like not being able to see. Something could sneak up on you. You could get lost.”

Back then, he’d still been confused as to why his stomach twisted whenever she was upset. 

“Relax. As if I’d let you get lost.”

He could only just make out her face in the dark, her clever eyes, her chattering jaw.

“I’ll find you if you get lost, and you’ll find me if I get lost. Deal?” she’d said.

She’d held up her pinky. He’d shook it with his. The most sacred of pacts between two lost, broken kids who only had each other.

“Deal.”)

~~

**_2019, April 1st_**

Five is an adult now, properly - physically 29, like the rest of his siblings. He sits in his car, parked on the side of the road, and watches Dolores and her friends giggle their way down the street.

She’s 13, in the same skirt and polka dot blouse she was in when they’d first met. This Dolores is different from his own, however; her smile stretches easily across her face, her face is lighter, her gait is a little clunky on her prosthetic legs. She is younger and happier and there is no apocalypse hanging over her head, but still her eyes are no less bright, and she carries herself the same, the same determined set of her shoulders like she’s daring the world to try something. (The same determined set of her shoulders when she argued with him, and dared him to argue back).

Five teleports to her front porch, drops something on the welcome mat, and teleports back before she and her gaggle of friends reach her house. One friend leaves and goes across the road (Five remembers her telling him her best friend lived across the street from her, one day as they dug through an old gas station for food and she was trying to coax him into telling her about himself), and finally she reaches her front gate and says goodbye. She waves with her bionic arm, still covered in ridiculous unicorn stickers, and he can’t help a small chuckle. (He can remember a time where they were burnt and peeling and she picked at them as her arm slowly ran out of charge, garishly bright against the ash).

He watches as she reaches her front door, stops. She bends down slowly and picks up a little box he’d written her name on.  
She opens it, and Five leans forward and holds his breath, strangely nervous as she considers. Then she smiles.

The ring he’d made for her, all those years ago, is a little too big for her 13 year old finger, but it will fit her one day. He’d included the chain she’d worn it on when it was inappropriate to wear a ring made out of a bottle cap and some braided fabric on missions, and she slides it over her head and beams.

“Hey, Mum?” she calls, and rushes inside.

Five sits back, sighs. He takes out the ring she’d made for him from his shirt pocket, admires it, puts it back. Rubs the top of his head, where an impressive egg is forming after Klaus put a bucket on the top of his door for April Fools.

Something... something like peace, something like _closure_, maybe, settles over him. 

(He remembers her laugh and her soft little smile whenever he said something stupid, the feeling of her fingers carding through his hair when he was tired, the grim set of her mouth as she found her target and pulled the trigger.  
He remembers asking her what they would do, now that they’d finally saved the world. Maybe we can grow up, she’d said.)

She isn’t lost, and neither is he.


End file.
